The Last Gentleman: A Novel

by Walker Percy

  His heart gave a big pump. Did Kitty want what she appeared to want? Did she want him to fuck her in the summerhouse? Yes! And it was Kitty’s ass he wanted. Yes! He blinked in astonishment. It was as if he had forgotten about women, about loving women, about having a woman’s ass or loving a woman, one woman, one’s own heart’s love, love her heart, mind, soul, sweet lips, ass and all. A violent shiver took hold of him; hairs on his arm raised. What was he afraid of? of being caught? that he shouldn’t? that he couldn’t?

  Heart beating in his neck, he hurried down the back stairs to the garage—and fell. Either fainted or fell, or slipped and fell, and knocked himself out, or perhaps had a fit, one of his “petty-mall” spells. Fit or fall, it seemed to him that he drifted down weightlessly, careening softly off the walls of the stairwell, and fetched up comfortably at the bottom of the steps. If he had been knocked out, he must have come to instantly, in decent time to collect himself, not get up but arrange himself in a sitting-lying position on the bottom step.

  There was a sound. Someone had entered the garage.

  The narrow stairwell was dark. The bright cloud seemed to fill the garage. He could see the three cars and most of the floor without being seen.

  Methodically he felt his arms and legs and clenched his fists. Had he had a stroke? Would he have to carry one fisted hand in the other like a baby? No, his hands worked. Something wet and warm ran into the orbit of one eye. He touched his cheek. It was blood. Above, at his temple, rose a clotted swelling. Though it seemed to be growing larger, it didn’t hurt.

  The cat sat in its usual place under the Rolls. Tendrils of fog drifted across the clean floor. The light from the cloud struck the concrete at such an angle that he could make out the faint arcs of the mason’s trowel. The fog crept under the Mercedes, where it vaporized and disappeared. Perhaps there was a faint warmth in the motor.

  He noted with curiosity that there seemed to be no hurry, that there was all the time in the world, time to take account of small events in the garage. More important, it had become possible to take stock of himself, assess the extent of his injuries, and make his plans accordingly. Curious! Suddenly he had come into himself like the cat, got rid of the ghost which stood aside from himself, forever rushing ahead or hanging back. Here he was in the real world of cats and concrete! He smiled. Perhaps something had been knocked loose in his head. Or perhaps something loose had been knocked together.

  Someone had come from behind the Rolls and was standing over him. Leaning on one elbow, he cocked his head to look up.

  “Lawyer Barrett?”

  “Yes?”

  It was Ewell McBee.

  “Lawyer Barrett, I needed to tell you something.”

  “You already told me. You apologized for the shot. Don’t worry about it,” he said dreamily. Ewell loomed against the white cloud. As he shaded his eyes with one hand to see him better, he noticed that Ewell’s head silhouetted against the whiteness showed a slight hollowing at the temple oddly like his own. And when he turned his head, there was a familiar snoutishness about the nose.

  “I needed to ask you something.”

  Ewell did not seem to find it remarkable that he was lounging in the dark stairwell.

  In his strange new mood he made the following observation: people notice very little indeed, ghost-ridden as they are by themselves. You have to be bleeding from the mouth or throwing a fit for them to take notice. Otherwise, anything you do is no more or less than another part of the world they have to deal with, poor souls.

  You worry about what you are supposed to do. The funny thing is, no matter what you do, people believe it is no more or less than what you are supposed to do.

  “I’m going to make you a proposition you can’t turn down, haw haw,” said Ewell. He hawked, spat, hiked a foot up on the Mercedes bumper, settled his crotch.

  “Your video-cassette company? How much do you want me to invest?” He seemed to understand everything Ewell said before he said it. He tried to stand but something was wrong with his left leg; it gave way. It was possible to resume his lounging position in such a casual way that Ewell did not seem to notice.

  “I want you to hear about it from my potner,” said Ewell, placing one hand softly on the Mercedes hood. “We going to have us a little party tonight. At my villa. A private screening of her latest film. It’s called Foxy Frolics and it’s a winner, I guarantee. Just me and my potner and you and her leading lady. She’s actually a wonderful girl named Cheryl Lee from Chapel Hill and she’s as smart as she can be. What she really wants to do is play the violin for the Appalachian symphony. She’s into erotic movies for the money. What she really is a musician. What talent! The party is her idea. She wants to meet you. For some reason she thinks you’re the smartest and sexiest man she ever saw. I told her you were as dumb as me, just richer, har har.”

  A rushing black tide seemed to be filling one end of the garage. When he closed one eye, then the other, it did not go away. But when he turned his head a little to confront it, the wall of darkness retreated.

  Ewell hawked. “We can have us a party. First I make us some toddies like your daddy used to make, then Norma Jean will cook us a steak, then we’ll show the film and I promise you you’ll have the finest time you ever had. Cheryl is a little armful of heaven, but she is also smart. You and me understand each other, don’t we?”

  He cocked his head, the better to see the looming figure of Ewell McBee, the slightly hollow temple, the snoutish nose. It seemed strange to hear Ewell, who once was a bully and jerk-off artist who wore bib overalls and had thick white country-white skin talking about “films” and “screening” and being “into” this and that.

  But he was only half listening. He tested the strength of his hands, moved his legs. I believe I can walk after Ewell leaves. The rushing darkness had fallen back. Is it a tumor or stroke or what? he wondered. It did not seem to matter. The newfound core of calmness and freedom seemed safe from such things, even from the tide of darkness trembling at the corner of his eye.

  Unhurriedly he began to listen to Ewell, who was talking about his, Will Barrett’s, father.

  “He was the smartest man I ever knew and he would bet on anything. He would bet you five dollars a mockingbird would sit still while he hit a niblick out of the sand.”

  Yeah, that’s real smart.

  “He would always give me ten dollars after a round—that was a lot then. Once I was caddying for him and Judge Pettigrew and Senator Talley and an insurance man and I heard him buy a one-million-dollar life-insurance policy, just like that.”

  That was real smart too. Buy a million-dollar life-insurance policy, then scatter your brain cells over the state of Mississippi.

  “I never will forget one thing he told a preacher. One time they had a preacher in the foursome. A big famous preacher from Montreat. I could tell he was getting on your daddy’s nerves. He couldn’t cuss. The preacher kept talking about his church, how much money he took in, and saving souls, ten thousand souls in this one church in Charlotte. Oh the soul this and the soul that, praise the Lord and so forth. Your daddy didn’t say a word. But he was getting hot under the collar. Then he said something to the preacher I will never forget. You know what he said?” Ewell hawked and hiked himself.

  “No.”

  “He said to him right in the middle of number-six fairway. He said let me tell you something about all those souls you’re bragging about. In the first place, you want to know what a soul is? I’ll tell you. A soul is a man like you and me and Ewell here. You want to know what a man is? I’ll tell you. A man is born between an asshole and a peehole. He eats, sleeps, shits, fucks, works, gets old, and dies. And that’s all he does. That’s what a man is. That’s what he said. I’m telling you, your daddy was a pistol-ball.”

  “Yes.” That’s what he was, a pistol-ball.

  “Well, we going to have our little party?”

  “Party?” he said absently.

  “If you don’t, Lawyer
Barrett, you’ll be making the mistake of your life. Here is this beautiful talented girl who has the hots for you, and you may not have another chance because I guarantee you she’s on her way up. Just you remember her name, Cheryl Lee. That’s her stage name. Her real name is Sarah Goodman from Wilmington and she’s going to be famous.”

  “Will she be famous for Foxy Frolics or for her violin playing?” He pricked up his ears. “Did you say Sarah Goodman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she Jewish?”

  “Jewish? Why yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. Her old man is Sol Goodman in dry-goods.”

  “Did you say she was from Wilmington?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Wilmington, North Carolina?”

  “Why yes. Do you know her?”

  “And you say she’s leaving? She’s going back to Israel, right?”

  “Israel? Why no. If she passes her audition, she’s moving to Asheville. If not, she’ll come back to Highlands and make movies with Norma Jean. I think she ought to do that anyhow. She’s a real fine little actress.”

  “I see.” He brightened. “Are you sure she’s Jewish? I mean, after all you can’t go by a name. Rosenberg was a Nazi.”

  “Is the Pope Catholic? I’m telling you, I know her old man, Sol Goodman.”

  “I see.”

  “Cheryl could make it either way. She’s got it all. Do you know who she looks exactly like? Remember Linda Darnell? Imagine a Linda Darnell who can play the violin like Evelyn and Phil Spitalny. In fact, now that she’s finished this film, she’s getting ready for her first recital.”

  He must have had a lapse of inattention or perhaps even another spell. Did he blank out? How much time passed? In any case, he must have seemed rude because the next thing he knew, Ewell McBee was standing directly over him, feet apart, hands on his hips, speaking loudly. He seemed to be in a rage.

  “You want to know what your trouble is, Lawyer Barrett?”

  “Why, yes,” he said with genuine curiosity, cocking his head to look up.

  “The trouble with you is you always thought you were too good for anybody or anything. Nothing is ever good enough for you.”

  “Really?” he said, peering up at Ewell with interest. “How is that?”

  “You always thought you were so damn smart. You and your daddy. But I’m here to tell you something. The only difference between you and me is money. Outside of that, you and I are exactly alike. You and your daddy are smart all right but there is such a thing as outsmarting yourself. You even think you’re smarter than your daddy, don’t you?”

  “Is that right?” Well, yes.

  He gazed up at Ewell with curiosity. Enemies, he knew, often tell the truth. And these days enemies, honest enemies are few and far between. Nobody says anything unpleasant. Enemies will often tell you unsuspected truths about yourself, just as a photograph or a double mirror will show your snoutish nose.

  “You know I’m right, Lawyer Barrett.”

  “About what?”

  “About us being exactly alike.”

  “How is that?”

  “You know as well as I do we could have us a fine time having a party with Cheryl and Norma Jean, looking at the film and having some drinks and later having a real party. I mean a fine time. A little pussy never hurt anybody. You like pussy as much as I do, don’t you?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it lately,” he said, but thinking now of Kitty’s ass. Well, yes. How could it have slipped my mind? What time is it?

  “But you don’t talk about it because you think you’re too good to have a party with me.”

  “A party with Sarah Goodman is not out of the question.”

  But Ewell’s anger carried him beyond listening. In a way, he’s taking another shot at me, he saw.

  “Me and you are alike as two peas in a pod,” said Ewell, moving his shoulders. “The only difference between us is that me and my daddy had to work like niggers and you and your daddy had your own niggers and enough money to learn lawyering and how to talk. Otherwise, we just the same.”

  “How are we the same?” he asked curiously, straining up to see and hear.

  “Your daddy said it. What’s more, we both love money, only you were smarter about getting it and so you don’t have to talk about it. You marry the richest lady in the state, so you don’t have to worry about it. Then you can go around giving it away, so you can be man-of-the-year. Like money don’t matter to you. You’re right. It don’t matter if you got it. But if you didn’t have it, it would matter. You act like you was so sorry your wife passed. Maybe you was. She was a real fine lady. But maybe it didn’t exactly kill your soul that you inherited all that money. But you would never say. The only difference between us is that I would say. I married the meanest damn white woman in Henderson County and I was glad she passed and I don’t mind saying so. But you’re smart. And you’re ever bit as cold-blooded as I am, only you don’t have to talk about it because you got money. Money may not be everything but it sho lets you act nice. My daddy used to tell me: make the money then act as nice as you please. You’re even smarter than your daddy. Look what happened to him. But not you. You setting there right this minute eyeing me and listening and figuring something out, ain’t you?”

  “What do you think I’m figuring out, Ewell?”

  “I don’t know because you don’t say. You never did. But you’re figuring hard as you can. And you setting there acting polite and you ain’t about to come to my house for a party.”

  “As a matter of fact, I would like to meet Sarah Goodman, that is, Cheryl Lee.” Kitty told him he had been Jewish in another life. Perhaps he had. Could it be that a native North Carolina Jewish girl was still here? that she had not only not returned to Israel but was hanging around Highlands making erotic movies and having parties in villas with Gentiles, Jutes like Ewell? If so, what did that signify? And why did he want to see her? to have her ass or to find out if she was going to Israel?

  Ewell, he saw, had reached that degree of anger where everything is received as a provocation. On he came, shouldering. The only thing that prevented a fistfight was that he, Will Barrett was lounging at his ease on the steps, sitting-lying, propped on one elbow, head cocked, eyeing him.

  A strange thought occurred to him. Perhaps Ewell was the last hater. Has a time come when not only has love left the world but hatred also and nothing is left but niceness?

  Ewell went on talking but with a slackening of anger, with even a hint of affection, perhaps the sort of affection which follows barroom brawls, but he didn’t listen closely.

  Ewell was making plans for the party. “Don’t worry about a thing. You and me going to have us a fine time.”

  The white cloud which filled the wide doorway had grown as dense and solid as a pearl. No doubt the sun shone directly upon it, for it was shot through with delicate colors.

  Again the ripple of darkness came forward at the corner of his eye but it went away when he tried to look at it. Instead, he looked at the three cars. The three, one English, one German, one Japanese, seemed as beautiful as birds poised for flight at any moment from the immaculate concrete.

  Perhaps I am having some sort of an attack, he thought with interest, a stroke, hemorrhage, tumor, epilepsy. But if something is wrong with me, how is it that I can see so clearly and calmly, that I do not cast forward or backward from myself, am here in the here-and-now, and know what I am going to do?

  But for a fact he may well have had one of his spells, for when he looked up, Ewell McBee had vanished without a trace. Swallowed up by the thick opalescent cloud.

  9

  So here he was, the engineer, as Will Barrett used to think of himself in the early days when he wandered around in a funk in New York trying to “engineer” his own life, now years later, after a fairly normal life, a fairly happy marriage, a successful career, and a triumphant early retirement to enjoy the good things of life. Here he was, more
funked out and nuttier than ever, having experienced another of his “spells” as they used to be called in his childhood, which were undoubtedly a form of epilepsy to say the least and perhaps a disorder a good deal more serious. Here he was, pacing up and down his room, sunk in thought, smiling from time to time, and once snapping his fingers softly like a man who has suddenly hit upon the solution to a difficult problem. And indeed he had, or thought he had. So intent was he in planning his new “experiment” that he had forgotten about lunch, about his daughter’s impending wedding, about his guests downstairs and, for the moment at least, about his tryst with Kitty in the summerhouse. (Yet why did he look at his watch?)

  The plan of action he had hatched would surely have seemed lunatic and laughable to the good folk of Linwood, or to any sensible person for that matter, if it were not fraught with dangerous, even fatal consequences. Though he had given up his peculiar preoccupation with the Jews—the Jews, it seemed, had not left North Carolina—he had conceived an even more outlandish scheme and now was making plans for putting it into action. It is one thing to labor under the delusion that all Jews had left North Carolina. It is something else to embark upon an adventure which would surely endanger his life.

  What a shame he could not have relaxed and enjoyed life like his friends and neighbors in this, one of the pleasantest of all places. Good people they were by and large, business and professional men like himself who had worked hard, made money, raised families, been good citizens, and now were able to enjoy summer places or retire into condos and villas and savor the fruits of their labors. They walked in the woods ablaze with fall colors, played golf on a famous and sportive old links, went shopping for quilts or jellies or antiques, or simply sat about their patios having a sociable drink or two against a backdrop of Sourwood Mountain, gorges, and the faint blue hulk of the Great Smokies.